Connecticut Asks Facebook About Anti-Fraud Controls
Connecticut asked Facebook Inc. how it detects and disables fraudulent accounts as part of a probe into claims that a state legislator’s identity was misused in a scam that solicited people for money.
The lawmaker, Representative Kim Rose, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview today that someone had created a Facebook page using her name and photograph without her permission and then requested money from her “friends.” She said she tried dozens of times to report the fraud to the company.
Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said in an e- mailed statement that he wrote a letter to the closely held Palo Alto, California-based company asking how many complaints it received in the last 18 months about fraudulent or “hacked” accounts, how it responded and what safeguards were in place to detect or disable fake or “hacked” Facebook accounts. The company was asked to provide the information by Feb. 22.
“My hope is to work cooperatively with Facebook to ensure that its users in Connecticut and elsewhere are provided adequate security and receive quick and effective responses when security breaches occur,” Jepsen said in the statement.
Rose said someone created a page using her name and began “friending” her “friends.” The person told her “friends” she put them in for a poverty grant and, if they sent $650, that would cover the taxes. She said one acquaintance fell for the scam.
She said the only way to contact Facebook was to go on the fraudulent page and report it as such. She said she’s investigating how to make Facebook accountable after it failed to respond to her complaints.
‘60 Times’
“I must have reported it 60 times,” Rose said.
Simon Axten, a spokesman for Facebook, the most popular social network, said the company takes security seriously and works to protect people from scams.
“This includes developing complex technical systems to flag and block suspicious behavior, including the creation of phony accounts, providing easy reporting channels for people to let us know when something is wrong, and educating people on how to protect themselves through our Facebook Security Page and concerted campaigns,” he said in an e-mail. “We’re always working to improve our systems and processes to better support the over 500 million people who use Facebook.”
-0-Editors: Peter Blumberg, Glenn Holdcraft
To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Freifeld in New York at kfreifeld@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Pickering at Jpickering@bloomberg.net
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